End “Siege of Harrogate” now says Harrogate’s UKIP County Councillor

A Harrogate county councillor is calling for an end to the “siege” of the town by Northern Gas Networks.

David Simister (UKIP, Harrogate Bilton & Nidd Gorge) said the sheer number of roads being dug up – and temporary traffic lights on many of the main commuter routes – was a continuing nightmare for drivers.

Coun Simister, whose division takes in the heavily congested Skipton Road, was now seeking an urgent meeting with highways chiefs in a bid to reduce the chaos the work by the gas utility was causing.

In addition to the on-going pipe-laying along Leeds Road, Hookstone Road, Otley Road and Harlow Moor Drive, signs have just gone up on Harrogate’s Crown Roundabout warning of five weeks of disruption there.

Church Lane, which leads from Leadhall Lane into Pannal village is also going to be shut whilst carriage repair works are undertaken.

Coun Simister said:

I’ve never seen anything like it before in Harrogate. Just about every major road into the town is being dug up and so too are countless side streets in and around the town.

What is most galling to many drivers is that as usual holes are dug, temporary traffic lights set up and no one is seeing working for days on end!

And thanks to ‘health and safety’, even the smallest excavation has to be managed by traffic lights.

The temporary four-way lights outside the Conservative Club on East Parade have been there for at least three weeks and they cause carnage every morning and evening.

My other concern is that once the work has been finished the roads will be left looking like badly put together patchwork quilts and, with winter just around the corner, the reinstated sections may very quickly become potholes.

Because of the all the work going on, commuters are trying to find alternative routes to and from work, which is turning many residential routes into rat runs.

I was elected to represent the residents of Harrogate and I am asking for a meeting with the local County Council highways team to see what can be done.